In the town of Nay―the same in which, some months previously, young Henry Busquet had been miraculously cured―a female, already considerably advanced in years, Mme. Rizan, a widow, was on the point of death. Her life, at least for the last twenty-four or twenty-five years, had been one of perpetual pain. Attacked in 1832 by the cholera, she had remained almost entirely paralyzed in her left side: she was quite lame, and could only move a few steps in the interior of her house by supporting herself against the walls or different articles of furniture. Rarely, twice or three times a year, in the height of summer, was she able―assisted and almost carried by strangers―to repair to the parish church of Nay, near as it was to her residence, to hear Mass. It was impossible for her, without assistance from others, either to kneel down or to rise from a kneeling posture. One of her hands was entirely atrophied. Her general health had suffered, not less than her limbs, from this terrible scourge. She was subject to continual vomiting of blood. Her stomach was unable to bear any solid food. A little meat gravy, light soups and coffee had, however sufficed, in her deplorable condition, to sustain in her the flickering flame of life―a flame ever weak, ever on the point of being extinguished on its mysterious hearth, and powerless to convey sufficient warmth to her wretched body, which was often attacked with icy trembling fits. The poor woman was always cold. Even in the midst of the heats of July and August she always begged to see the fire blazing on the hearth, and requested to have her old invalid-chair wheeled close to the mantel-piece.
For the last sixteen or eighteen months her state had changed considerably for the worse, and the paralysis of her left side had become total; the same infirmity commenced to attack her right leg. Her atrophied limbs were swollen beyond measure, as is sometimes the case with those of dropsical patients.
Mme. Rizan had been obliged to quit her armchair for her bed. She could not move in it, so great was her state of infirmity, and those about her were obliged to turn her from time to time and to change her position. She was nothing more than a helpless mass. Her sense of feeling was gone as well as her power of moving. “Where are my legs?” she used to say sometimes when anyone came to move her from one part of her bed to another.
Her limbs were drawn up together and she remained constantly lying on her side.
Two medical men had successively attended her. Doctor Talamon had long since regarded her as incurable but continued to visit her only as a friend. He refused to prescribe any remedies for her, alleging that any treatment, no matter of what nature, would be fatally injurious, and that drugs and medicines could only weaken the poor invalid and exhaust still more her system, which had already been so terribly attacked. Doctor Subervielle, at the entreaty of Mme. Rizan, had prescribed some remedies, which were speedily acknowledged to be useless, and he too had given up all hope.
Along with her paralyzed limbs, the sufferings experienced by this unfortunate woman elsewhere, sometimes in her stomach and sometimes in her head, were of the most fearful description. Owing to the fact of her being obliged to remain always in one position, her poor body was afflicted with two painful sores―one in the hollow of her chest and the other in her back. On her side, in several places, her skin was worn away by long contact with the bed-clothes, and exposed her flesh denuded and bleeding. Her death was at hand.
Mme. Rizan had two children. Her daughter, called Lubine, lived with her and attended her with unceasing devotedness. Her son, M. Romain Rizan, had a situation in a commercial house at Bordeaux.
When the last hope was given up, and Doctor Subervielle had declared that the poor sick woman had scarcely a few days to live, M. Romain Rizan was sent for in all haste. He came, embraced his mother, and received her blessing and last farewell. Then, being obliged to start on his return immediately, in consequence of an order which recalled him, torn from the foot of this death-bed by the cruel tyranny of business, he left his mother with the painful certainty of seeing her no more.
The dying woman had been administered. Her death-agony was prolonged amid intolerable sufferings.
“O God!” she often exclaimed, “be pleased to put an end to this intolerable pain. Grant that I may either recover or die!”
She sent to beg the Sisters of the Cross at Izon ―her sister-in-law being their Superior―to make a Novena to the most Blessed Virgin in order to obtain from her power, either her recovery or death. She also expressed a wish to drink some of the water of the Grotto. One of her neighbors, Mme. Nessans, who happened to be going to Lourdes, promised to bring her some of it on her return.
For some time past she had been watched day and night. On Saturday, October 16, a violent crisis announced the inevitable approach of her last moments. She was continually spitting blood. A livid tint spread over her emaciated countenance. Her eyes became glassy. The poor invalid seldom spoke except to complain of the acute pain she suffered. “Lord!” she often repeated, “Lord Jesus how I suffer! Can I not then die?”
“Her wish will be very shortly granted,” observed Doctor Subervielle, as he left her. “She will die in the course of the night, or at latest towards daybreak. There is no more oil in the lamp.”
From time to time the door of the sick-room was opened to admit friends, neighbors and priests―among the latter the Abbé Dupont and the Abbé Sanareus, Vicaire of Nay―who entered silently, and asked in a low voice, if the dying woman still breathed.
At night, when he left her, the Abbé André Dupont, her consoler and friend, could not restrain his tears.
“Before tomorrow she will be dead,” said he, “and I shall only see her again in Paradise.”
Night had come, and by degrees, the house had been reduced to a state of solitude. On her knees, before a statue of the Virgin, Lubine was praying, all earthly hope having vanished. The deepest silence reigned around, only disturbed by the painful breathing of the sick woman. It was nearly midnight.
“Lubine!” exclaimed the dying mother.
Lubine rose hastily from her knees and approached the bed.
“What do you wish, dearest mother?” she said, taking her by the hand.
“My dear child,” said the dying mother to her, in a strange tone of voice, which seemed to proceed, as it were, from a heavy dream, “go to the house of our friend Mme. Nessans, who was to have returned tonight from Lourdes. Beg her to give you a glass of the water from the Grotto. It is this water which is to cure me. The Blessed Virgin so wills it.”
“My dearest mother,” replied Lubine, it is now too late to go there. “I cannot leave you alone, and every one at Mme. Nessans’s must be in bed by this time. Tomorrow morning I will go for it as early as possible.”
“Well, let us wait, then.”
The sick mother relapsed into silence.
The night passed away long and weary.
At length daybreak was announced by the joyous Sunday bells. The morning Angelus bore upwards to Mary the prayers of earth, and celebrated the eternal memory of her omnipotent maternity. Lubine hastened to the house of Mme. Nessans, and soon returned, bringing with her a bottle of the water from the Grotto.
“Here, dearest mother, drink! and may the Blessed Virgin come to your assistance.”
Mme. Rizan raised the glass to her lips and swallowed a few mouthfuls.
“O my child, my child, it is Life that I am drinking. There is Life in this water. Bathe my face with it. Bathe all my body with it.”
Trembling from head to foot, and almost beside herself with emotion, Lubine moistened a piece of linen in the miraculous water and washed her mother’s face with it.
“I feel myself cured!” exclaimed the latter, in a tone of voice which had become clear and strong. “I feel myself cured!”
Lubine, in the meantime, was bathing with the moistened linen her poor mother’s paralyzed and swollen limbs. With transports of joy, mingled with I know not what shudder of terror, she perceived the enormous swelling to subside and disappear under the rapid movement of her hand, and the skin, which was violently stretched and shining, to resume its natural appearance. Suddenly and entirely, without going through any transition state, health and life were reviving beneath her fingers.
“It seems to me,” said her mother, “as if fiery pimples were issuing out of every part of my body.”
It was doubtless the internal principle of the malady which was taking flight from the body so racked with pain and quitting it forever owing to the agency of a superhuman will.
All this had been accomplished in a moment. In one or two minutes the body of Mme. Rizan―a moment previous in the death-agony―had, on being bathed by her daughter, recovered the plenitude of its strength.
“I am cured! altogether cured!” exclaimed the happy woman. “How kind the Blessed Virgin is! How powerful she is!”
Then, after this outburst of gratitude to heaven, the material appetites of earth made themselves forcibly felt.
“Lubine, dearest Lubine, I am hungry. I want something to eat.”
“Will you have some coffee, or will you have some wine or milk?” stammered out the young girl, troubled at the astounding suddenness of the Miracle.
“I would like to have some bread and meat, my child,” said her mother. “It is now more than twenty-four years since I have tasted either.”
There happened to be some cold meat and a little wine near at hand. Mme. Rizan partook of both.
“And now,” said she, “I wish to rise.”
“It is impossible, dearest mother,” said Lubine, hesitating, in spite of herself, to believe her eyes, and fancying, perhaps, that the cures which proceeded directly from God were subject, like those of an ordinary nature, to the slow progress and precautions of convalescence.
Mme. Rizan insisted on leaving her bed, and asked for her clothes. They had been for many months folded up and put in their place in a wardrobe of an adjoining chamber, under the idea, alas! that they would be needed no more. Lubine left the room in quest of them. She returned almost immediately, but on reaching the threshold of the door, she uttered a loud cry and let fall on the floor―so great was the shock―the dress she had in her hand.
Her mother, during Lubine’s short absence, had sprung out of her bed and had gone to kneel before the mantelpiece, on which there was a statue of the Virgin. There she was, with clasped hands, pouring out her gratitude to her powerful deliverer.
Lubine terrified, as if she had beheld one rise from the dead, was incapable of assisting her mother to dress. The latter picked up her gown, dressed herself in a moment without any assistance, and knelt down once more at the feet of the sacred image.
It was about seven o’clock in the morning, and those who had attended the first Mass were just coming out of Church. Lubines’s cry was heard in the street by persons who were passing under her windows.
“Poor girl,” they observed, “it is her mother who has just expired. It was impossible she could get through the night.”
Several persons, either friends or merely neighbors, immediately entered the house to console and support Lubine in her indescribable sorrow. Among them were two Sisters of the Holy Cross.
“Well, my poor girl,” they said, “your excellent mother is then dead! You will, however, see her again in heaven.”
They then approached the young woman, whom they found leaning against the half-opened door, with a countenance expressive of great consternation.
Lubine could scarcely make them any reply. “My mother has risen from the dead,” said she, with a voice stifled with such strong emotion, that she could not bear it without fainting.
“She is raving,” thought the Sisters, as they entered the apartment, followed by some persons who had ascended the staircase with them.
What Lubine had said was, however, true. Mme. Rizan had quitted her bed. She was dressed and was praying, prostrate before the image of Mary. She rose and said:
“I am cured! Let us offer up a thanksgiving to the Blessed Virgin. Let all kneel down.”
The news of this extraordinary cure spread with the rapidity of lightning through the town of Nay. All that and the following day, the house was crowded with people. The throng, in the highest degree of emotion and recollectedness, pressed into the room, through which a ray of the omnipotent goodness of God had passed. Everyone wished to see Mme. Rizan, to touch her body which had been restored to life, to convince himself by the evidence of his own eyes, and to engrave on his memory all the details of this supernatural drama.
Doctor Subervielle acknowledged, without any hesitation, the divine and supernatural character of this extraordinary cure.
At Bordeaux, in the meanwhile, M. Romain Rizan, reduced to despair, was expecting, in an agony of mind, the fatal missive which was to announce to him the death of his mother.
It was a terrible blow for him when one morning, a letter reached him by post, which was directed in the well-known handwriting of the Abbé Dupont.
“I have lost my poor mother!” he observed to a friend who had come to pay him a visit. He burst into tears, and had not the courage to tear open the envelope.
“Do not give way to weakness in your misfortune; have faith,” said his friend to him.
He at length broke the seal. The first words which struck his eyes were the following: “Deo gratias, Allelulia.” Rejoice, my dear friend. Your mother is cured, completely cured. It is the Blessed Virgin who has restored her miraculously to health.” The Abbé Dupont proceeded in his letter to relate in what indisputably divine a manner Mm. Rizan had found, at the end of her agony, Life in the place of death.
We may easily fancy the joy of the son and of his friend.
This friend was employed in a printing establishment at Bordeaux, where the Messager Catholique was published.
“Give me that letter,” he said to Romain Rizan; “the works of God ought to be known and Our Lady of Lourdes glorified.”
Half willingly and half reluctantly, Romain confided the letter to his friend. It was published in the Messager Catholique a few days afterwards.
The happy son returned almost immediately to Nay. On the arrival of the stagecoach, a woman was waiting for him. She ran to him briskly, when he got out of the carriage and rushed into his arms weeping with tenderness and joy.
It was his mother.
Ten years afterwards, the author of this work, in quest of all the details of the truth, went himself― in order to collect materials for this history ―to reopen the investigation which had long before been made by the Episcopal Commission. He paid a visit to Mme. Rizan, whose perfect health and energetic old age excited his admiration. Although she has reached her seventy-first year, she has none of the infirmities which advanced age usually brings in its train. Not a trace remains of so much suffering. All those who had known her formerly, and whose testimony we heard, had not recovered from their astonishment at so miraculous an event.
We desired to see Doctor Soubervielle. He had been dead several years.
“But,” we observed to an ecclesiastic of Nay who acted as our guide, “Madame Rizan was, if I am not mistaken, visited by another medical man of the place, Doctor Talamon?”
“He is a very distinguished man,” answered our companion. “He was in the habit of going constantly to the house of Madame Rizan, not in his medical capacity, but as her friend and neighbor. Now, immediately after the miraculous cure, he ceased to visit her, and did not make his reappearance at her house until nine or ten months afterwards.”
“Perhaps,” we rejoined, “he wished to avoid being interrogated on the subject, and having to explain his own views on the extraordinary event, which was no doubt somewhat opposed to his principles of medical philosophy.”
“I do not know how that was.”
“No Matter, I should like to see him.”
We knocked at his door.
Doctor Talamon is a tall and handsome old man, with an intelligent and expressive countenance. A remarkable brow, a crown of white hair, a glance indicative of very decided opinions, a mouth capable of varied expression, on which the smile of skepticism often plays: such are the principal features you would observe on approaching him for the first time.
We explained to him the object of our visit.
“It is a long time since all that happened,” he observed to us. “At a distance of ten or twelve years my memory has but a very dim recollection of the subject of your conversation, to say nothing of my not having actually witnessed it myself. I did not see Mme. Rizan for several months afterwards, and I know not in what state, by what agents, or in what degree of slowness or rapidity her cure was effected.”
“What, then, sir, had you not the curiosity to verify, in your individual capacity, the extraordinary fact which you must have immediately learned from public rumor, which was widely spread in this place?”
“To tell you the truth, sir,” he replied, directing his answer to me, “I am an old physician. I know that the laws of nature are never reversed; and, to tell you the honest truth, I am no believer in all these miracles.”
“Ah! Doctor, you sin against the faith,” exclaimed the Abbé who had introduced me.
“And I, Doctor, do not accuse you of sinning against the faith, but I accuse you of sinning against the particular science which you profess; that of medicine.”
“How and in what?”
“Medicine is not a speculative science, it is an experimental science. Experiment is its law. The observation of facts is its first and fundamental principle. If you had been told that Mme. Rizan had been cured in this manner by rubbing herself with an infusion of such or such a plant recently discovered in the mountains, you certainly would not have failed in going to establish the truth or otherwise of the cure. You would have examined the plant, and have recorded a discovery which would perhaps have appeared to you of not less importance than that of quinine in the last century. But, in this case, a water, which had miraculously gushed forth, was spoken of, and you did not take the trouble of going to see it. Forgetting that you were a physician, or in other words, a humble observer of facts, you have refused to bestow on it even a passing glance, like those academies of science which rejected steam without condescending to investigate its claims, and which proscribed quinine in the name of I know not what pretended medical principles. In medicine, when a fact presents itself which contradicts an established principle, it simply proves that the principle is false. Experiment is the supreme judge. And here, Doctor, allow me to point out to you that if you had not had some vague consciousness of the truth of what I am now telling you, you would not have hesitated in going to ascertain the truth, and you would have given yourself the pleasure of branding as an imposture a Miracle which was exciting the whole country. But this would have exposed you to the necessity of surrendering at discretion, and you have acted like men attached to a particular party, who will not hear the arguments of their opponents. You have listened to your philosophical prejudices and you have disobeyed the first law of medicine, which is to face the study of facts―no matter of what nature―in order to derive instruction from them. I allow myself, Doctor, more freedom in saying these things to you, because I am aware of your great merit, and I am not ignorant that your very superior intellect is capable of listening to truth. Many medical men refuse to certify facts of this nature from human respect, not daring to brave either the displeasure of the Faculty or the railleries of their confrères. As to you, Doctor, if your philosophy has deceived you, the fear of man has had nothing to do with your keeping aloof.”
“Certainly not,” he said. “But, perhaps, placing myself in the point of view you have indicated, I should have done better to have examined the matter in question.”
